Guest View: Immigrant status is not sum of existence

JUANA GARCIA

Thursday

May 1, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Let me begin by thanking Standard-Times Editor and Associate Publisher Bob Unger for once again paying attention to us, immigrant workers, as we share our opinion in a public setting. Seldom do we feel that power brokers, decision makers and those who control capital investments in New Bedford have an interest in our lives and opinions.

Let me begin by thanking Standard-Times Editor and Associate Publisher Bob Unger for once again paying attention to us, immigrant workers, as we share our opinion in a public setting. Seldom do we feel that power brokers, decision makers and those who control capital investments in New Bedford have an interest in our lives and opinions.

On April 25, our respected colleague Simon Rios reported in The Standard-Times on an event in which we, the immigrant worker members and leaders of Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, commemorated the life of our deceased brother, Victor Gerena ("SouthCoast advocacy group calls for 'code of conduct'"). He lost his life while working while cleaning fish-processing equipment in New Bedford. In the course of this report, Mr. Rios quotes Jim Kendall of New Bedford Seafood Consulting concerning our proposed Code of Conduct for the $300 million fish-packing industry, "(Immigrant workers are) their own worst enemy by being in the positions where they're always going to be taken advantage of. A code of conduct doesn't mean anything if (a company) doesn't follow a code." In short, Mr. Kendall apparently contends that our surest path to success is by "fixing" our respective or collective immigration status.

In response, we can only assume that Mr. Kendall does not spend a lot of time on Capitol Hill in Washington. Actually, we're not really sure if he knows that conservatives of the Republican Party have blocked a significant legislative progress in the wake of developing public sentiment that has called for comprehensive immigration reform. Last month, the former pastor of many of our members, Boston Archbishop Cardinal Sean O'Malley, went to the Arizona border to pray in memory of so many of our sisters and brothers who have been injured, assaulted, raped and suffered death while crossing the desert. In response to this courageous gesture, we have heard only a collective, nearly silent yawn. Too many holders of capital are making too much money on the backs of undocumented immigrant workers in the status quo.

Many of us in CCT, we realize, spent our formative years deprived of formal education in Central America. With the collaboration of our allies here at UMass Dartmouth, the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, the Community Economic Development Center and others, we know that the state government in the United States is primarily responsible for worker safety (Department of Industrial Accidents) and fair wages (Attorney General's Office). The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration representatives we meet assure us that, given their structural underfunding, they aim for accident prevention rather than enforcement, with the latter ensuing after publicized worker injury or death.

Our further worker rights training and education leads us to conclude that, during the past century in which the federal government has paid any attention to immigration status, we as immigrant workers have in fact joined our forebears from Europe and Asia as cheap labor for the United States economy. Europe supplied the industrial era of mechanized factories with labor, while others brought the Midwest and Plains under agriculture (after the militarized genocide of Native American communities), and Asia served as the source of laborers for dangerous mining and railroad work. Were it not for such committed folklorists as Woody Guthrie and others, we do not know if anyone would remember the rural Mexican braceros who the federal government secured during times of need and deported at will when they proved surplus.

In short, it is important that Mr. Kendall know that, while we may lack the political power to countermand the federal government's flux in relating to us and our forebears as immigrant workers with any suggestion of interpersonal respect, we reject his and the government's contention that "cheap labor" is the summation of our human existence. As a native of Puerto Rico, our brother Victor Gerena lived and died as a fully vested citizen of the United States. Not that that did him any good, nor did it provide him with basic worker safety provisions and education, when he went to work on the New Bedford waterfront.

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